Loot

A startling new work: ten fictions, each a revelation of our interior lives, each entering unforeseen contexts of our contemporary world. In the title story an earthquake exposes both an ocean bed strewn with treasure among the dead, and the avarice of the town's survivors. In 'The Diamond Mine' a woman remembers her first, passionately erotic experience, hidden, in the company of her parents, with a soldier who may not be alive to remember her. The anopheles mosquito brings death to the saunas and other playgrounds of the developed with in 'The Emissary'. 'Mission Statement' is the story of a Development Agency official's idealism, the ghosts of colonial history, and a love affair with a government minister that ends with an irony that astounds her. 'The Generations Gap' turns the 'gap' upside down when a father's bid for freedom shocks his adult children. In 'Homage' one of Europe's aliens visits the grave of the politician he was paid to assassinate. In 'Karma', Gordimer's inventiveness knows no bounds: in five returns to the earthly life, taking on different ages and genders, a disembodied narrator testifies to unfinished business - critically, wittily - and questions the nature of existence.